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Caldecott medalist Paul O. Zelinsky brings to life the magical
adventures of five children who stumble upon an ancient and grumpy sand
fairy with the power to make wishes come true. The fairy grants the
children one wish a day, and soon dreams of untold riches, flying, and
other marvels become reality. But it Isn't long before greed and
misunderstandings begin leading to one hilarious disaster after
another, and the children start to wonder whether It might be best to
wish that their fairy return to the sand. A wonderful, timeless tale,
perfectly complemented with Paul Zelinsky's twelve warm and funny
paintings.

About The Author

Edith Nesbit's first great success was The Story of
the Treasure-Seekers (1899). Her most celebrated book remains The
Railway Children, published in 1906. Her great gift was the ability to
create child characters who are real young human beings behaving
naturally. Her unhappy marriage gave her much experience with children;
as well as bringing up her own four by her philandering husband, she
consented to bring Bland's illegimate offspring into her household.

The house was three miles from the station, but before the dusty
hired fly had rattled along for five minutes the children began to put
their heads out of the carriage window and to say, 'Aren't we nearly
there?' And every time they passed a house, which was not very often,
they all said, 'Oh, is this it?' But it never was, till they reached
the very top of the hill, just past the chalk quarry and before you
come to the gravel pit. And then there was a white house with a green
garden and an orchard beyond, and Mother said, 'Here we are!'

'How white the house is,' said Robert.

'And look at the roses,' said Anthea.

'And the plums,' said Jane.

'It is rather decent,' Cyril admitted.

The Baby said, 'Wanty go walky'; and the fly stopped with a last
rattle and jolt.

Everyone got its legs kicked or its feet trodden on in the scramble
to get out of the carriage that very minute, but no one seemed to mind.
Mother, curiously enough, was in no hurry to get out; and even when she
had come down slowly and by the step, and with no jump at all, she
seemed to wish to see the boxes carried in, and even to pay the driver,
instead of joining in that first glorious rush round the garden and the
orchard and the thorny, thistly, briery, brambly wilderness beyond the
broken gate and the dry fountain at the side of the house. But the
children were wiser, for once. It was not really a pretty house at all;
it was quite ordinary, and Mother thought it was rather inconvenient,
and was quite annoyed at there being no shelves, to speak of, and
hardly a cupboard in the place. Father used to say that the ironwork on
the roof and coping was like an architect's nightmare. But the house
was deep in the country, with no other house in sight, and the children
had been in London for two years, without so much as once going to the
seaside even for a day by an excursion train, and so the White House
seemed to them a sort of fairy palace set down in an earthly paradise.
For London is like prison for children, especially if their relations
are not rich.

Of course there are the shops and the theatres, and Maskelyne and
Cook's, and things, but if your people are rather poor you don't get
taken to the theatres, and you can't buy things out of the shops; and
London has none of those nice things that children may play with
without hurting the things or themselves--such as trees and sand and
woods and waters. And nearly everything in London is the wrong sort of
shape--all straight lines and flat streets, instead of being all sorts
of odd shapes, as things are in the country. Trees are all different,
as you know, and I am sure some tiresome person must have told you that
there are no two blades of grass exactly alike. But in streets where
the blades of grass don't grow, everything is like everything else.
This is why so many children who live in towns are so extremely
naughty. They do not know what is the matter with them, and no more do
their fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, tutors, governesses,
and nurses; but I know. And so do you now. Children in the country are
naughty sometimes, too, but that is for quite different reasons.

The children had explored the gardens and the outhouses thoroughly
before they were caught and cleaned for tea, and they saw quite well
that they were certain to be happy at the White House. They thought so
from the first moment, but when they found the back of the house
covered with jasmine, all in white flower, and smelling like a bottle
of the most expensive scent that is ever given for a birthday present;
and when they had seen the lawn, all green and smooth, and quite
different from the brown grass in the gardens at Camden Town; and when
they had found the stable with a loft over it and some old hay still
left, they were almost certain; and when Robert had found the broken
swing and tumbled out of it and got a lump on his head the size of an
egg, and Cyril had nipped his finger in the door of a hutch that seemed
made to keep rabbits in, if you ever had any, they had no longer any
doubts whatever.

The best part of it all was that there were no rules about not going
to places and not doing things. In London almost everything is labeled
'You mustn't touch,' and though the label is invisible it's just as
bad, because you know it's there, or if you don't you jolly soon get
told.

The White House was on the edge of a hill, with a wood behind
it--and the chalk quarry on one side and the gravel pit on the other.
Down at the bottom of the hill was a level plain, with queer-shaped
white buildings where people burnt lime, and a big red brewery and
other houses; and when the big chimneys were smoking and the sun was
setting, the valley looked as if it was filled with golden mist, and
the limekilns and oasthouses glimmered and glittered till they were
like an enchanted city out of the Arabian Nights.

Now that I have begun to tell you about the place, I feel that I
could go on and make this into a most interesting story about all the
ordinary things that the children did--just the kind of things you do
yourself, you know--and you would believe every word of it; and when I
told about the children's being tiresome, as you are sometimes, your
aunts would perhaps write in the margin of the story with a pencil,
'How true!' or 'How like life!' and you would see it and very likely be
annoyed. So I will only tell you the really astonishing things that
happened, and you may leave the book about quite safely, for no aunts
and uncles either are likely to write 'How true!' on the edge of the
story. Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really
wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children
will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they
tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see
perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the
earth goes round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that
the sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good sun
as it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse.
Yet I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the sun, and if
so you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and Cyril
and the others had been a week in the country they had found a fairy.
At least they called it that, because that was what it called itself;
and of course it knew best, but it was not at all like any fairy you
ever saw or heard of or read about.